Not really. It just replaces this problem with a different but equally difficult problem: managing your crypto keys, which is a skill in and of itself. And if you hire someone to do it for you now you are right back where you started, trusting a third party.
The right answer IMHO is to do business with a bank that is small enough that you have a contact there whom you personally know and will pick up the phone when you call.
Um, depending on how complicated/paranoid you want to get?
Install the Phoenix wallet app and you've got your keys and Lightning node ready to go, pending added liquidity. Sure, it's not maximally secure, but a person can perform transactions outside the banking system pretty easily this way. No need to so consciously "manage" anything.
Phone not secure enough? Fine – then get a hardware wallet like Ledger.
But maybe I'm misunderstanding your point?
> And if you hire someone to do it for you now you are right back where you started, trusting a third party.
If, by hiring someone, you mean using a custodian like Kraken, then you're still solving a problem by not dealing with the traditional banking system. Sure, you're back to trusting a third party, but that's really not the issue at hand, but avoiding Big Bank.
> The right answer IMHO is to do business with a bank that is small enough that you have a contact there whom you personally know and will pick up the phone when you call.
Seems like a nice idea, yet very optimistic. Is everyone supposed to have a personal contact from within a small bank? Probably works for some people, but involves luck and wouldn't scale. The issue isn't really being solved this way.
The closest compromise might be to work with credit unions instead of banks.
That's trusting a third party.
> get a hardware wallet like Ledger
Again, trusting a third party, and one which had a data breach less than a year ago:
https://www.ledger.com/blog/security-incident-report
And even if you want to discount that, you still have the risk of physically losing the wallet or having it stolen.
> If, by hiring someone, you mean using a custodian like Kraken,
Yes, that's what I mean.
> then you're still solving a problem by not dealing with the traditional banking system.
And, like I said, replacing it with a different problem, of dealing with and trusting a crypto custodian.
> Is everyone supposed to have a personal contact from within a small bank?
In a perfect world, yes. In this world, anyone running a business should have at least one such contact.
> The closest compromise might be to work with credit unions instead of banks.
Yes, that's also a good solution, much better than crypto IMHO.
It's not, Phoenix is a non-custodial wallet. They provide one shortly-custodial service to on-board on the Lightning Network (to provide a seamless experience, but you can do the process manually with your own node if you prefer). Once the channel on LN is open, it is non-custodial and trustless.
For Hardware Wallets, plenty of other providers exist, exempt of data breaches and dodgy services unlike Ledger. For Bitcoin Coldcard comes to mind.
For the risk of physically losing your keys, seems like a less random, more in your control, risk than trusting Chase Bank, see OP.
> trusting a crypto custodian
If that's your choice, at least you have the option to avoid this with crypto... that's one thing I will never get with people who systematically bash Bitcoin, nobody forces you to use it, it provides you optionality and full control of your assets, something traditional bank and fiat do not offer at all, you are forced by the state to pay your taxes with the currency they tell you, you are practically forced to use banking as a cash only life is pretty complicated these days... so why hate on a new option.
What difference does that make? You're still trusting them not to have put in a backdoor, and to have sufficient security in their development process that an attacker cannot insert a backdoor.
Also, what happens to your keys if your smartphone fails? Is there a backup? Is that self-hosted too? Is it adequately encrypted?
Unless you do everything yourself (which ultimately means running your own foundry) you cannot escape having to trust someone. It might as well be your banker.
> full control of your assets
Until your keys are lost or compromised. Then you are irredeemably screwed.
Did not impact the viability of the hardware product at all.
